Technology & Coaching: Friends or Foes?

As 2026 planning gets underway every department in an organization is talking about how technology, specifically AI, might improve processes, might drive efficiencies and ultimately might lead to better outcomes.

Learning and development is no exception. In fact, conversations about technology within learning started before COVID and really accelerated when all training switched to a virtual format. It’s led to a lot of learning in the last five years about what works and what doesn’t. And it creates the question that teams considering coaching need to consider:

Do technology and coaching go hand-in-hand or does the value of one negate the value of the other?

It’s a conversation and a perspective we’ve shared with many L&D groups, and with planning top of mind in the coming weeks, it seemed like a good time to share those insights.

Our work on AI storytelling has helped many leaders and companies build understanding of what AI actually is and how it will play out in different ways and across different processes. We think of it as selling to the outcome and painting a clear picture of the end result. That’s how you get people aligned for the effort and work that may be required to get there.

Technology in coaching is a similar comparison. If you think through the outcome you want coaching to deliver, you’ll make better decisions about how technology partners with coaching.

But that wasn’t the approach five years ago. When the outcome was about finding ways to keep people involved in learning, technology served its purpose well. Give employees access to a platform, and they can find resources and short-form courses on many different topics. But as development goals have reset, giving people access to learning doesn’t seem to be enough. And that’s why many organizations are rethinking how they leverage coaching and technology together.

While the big coaching platforms provide coaching to everyone, anywhere and at any time, it comes at a cost of continuity and expertise. When the priority is reaching everyone, technology wins. When the priority is getting results, the 1:1 relationship with a consistent coach is essential. And in most companies, it’s a combination of both objectives reached in different ways that seems to be the best choice.

Specific to communication coaching, technology is very limited. There are innovative AI tools in the market that are exploring ways to assess the habits of a speaker– the number of um’s, the pace of speech, eye movement, etc. But it can’t adjust the habits, and that leaves a communicator with awareness of bad habits but little direction on new ones. More importantly, the emerging tools leave out the most essential ingredient of effective communication, the listener.

Communication is about influence and impact and less about preset patterns of voice modulation. In fact, when coaching focuses only on patterns for a communicator, you’re training to a standardized model rather than someone’s unique skills and strengths. And while it may be efficient, you won’t get great adoption or outcomes. For the best results, coaches and technology need to work together.

Consider these three Cs that we use to blend technology into our practice:

CONFIDENCE – The starting point of measuring results is a participant’s own feeling of confidence and competence about a new skill. We use technology to measure a starting point and end point. Regardless of frequency of sessions or activities someone does through an app, if someone isn’t feeling more confident, they won’t invest the time to strengthen a skill. Technology can track that measure and encourage an individual to see progress.

The coach notices the nuances that technology misses. A participant may say they feel more confident, but a coach can read the non-verbals and the subtle input that suggests the competency isn’t coming through. Working together, technology can give a coach added insights to enrich the engagement.

CONSISTENCY – To develop an effective communicator, you focus less on the occasional home run and more on consistent base hits. That’s when you know that skills are being adopted and adapted into an individual’s approach. A coach hears the results of different settings but doesn’t always see the progress first-hand.

Technology can complete the picture. Video recordings of live events taken from the perspective of a listener can help us assess how the communicator came across and how the listener felt in response to the message. Over a series of recordings, we’re tracking more than the habits of a communicator. We’re getting to group response and engagement with a communicator.

COMMUNITY – Videotaping opens the door to the listeners’ perspective which is the most accurate measurement of ROI. A communicator needs a 360 view to continue to assess and understand impressions.

Over longer engagements with high-profile leaders, we build a feedback loop to capture impressions after high-visibility events. This allows us to blend response to the communicator’s style as well as effectiveness of a communicator’s message. And on all engagements, we can add a pre and post assessment to measure how a communicator’s community is feeling about impact and takeaways.

Again, technology helps us blend anecdotal feedback with measured and tracked impressions. The coach leads the engagement, and technology adds the supporting inputs to validate impact.

So…is technology a friend or foe of coaching?

I would say a great friend, as long as you leverage the strengths of both to better outcomes. AI itself has a great term for how to think about technology in coaching: human in the loop.

Essentially it means keep the coach front and center and focused on guiding adaptable changes for an individual. Leverage technology to track improvement or catch the lack of it across a coaching engagement.

If you’re considering the role of technology in your L&D plans, we’d love to help you consider how you balance efficiencies with outcomes. And specific to communication, how technology and coaches can work together to deliver an impressive ROI.

Also Read: Communicating the Value & Impact of AI

 

Communicating the Value & Impact of AI

Everybody’s talking about it.

It’s been called the most significant technology advancement we will see in this decade. Some say in our lifetime. And with all the noise, buzz and focus, communication has become a critical tool in how companies position AI within their strategies.

It’s a different conversation at a dinner party than it is on a work team or in a boardroom. Personally, we’re having a lot of fun asking AI to plan vacations and solve our everyday problems. We’re all eager for our own personal agent. It seems like Siri’s distant cousin showed up and can do 10x more!

But in our work environment, it gets much more complex and a little less fun. In fact, most technologists say that how we’re experiencing AI as consumers is confusing what we can expect from AI in our workplace. And when it comes to telling the story of corporate AI, communication isn’t quite as clear or compelling.

We’ve had a front row seat over the last two years supporting many companies with AI communication. We’ve heard groups over promise AI outcomes and lose trust with their audiences. We’ve heard groups over explain AI applications and confuse audiences. And we’ve heard groups downplay AI and disappoint audiences.

Everyone is trying to sprint to early outcomes, but by technology standards, it will be more of a marathon to integrate AI throughout our world. That’s OK. But it does mean that communication will be a critical tool to help AI leaders and business leaders manage expectations, align strategies and bring each of their key audiences along on the journey.

It’s a great example of our storyline methodology because it requires a communicator to focus on audience perspectives, clear messaging and the ability to balance a future state with an actual one. The hype of AI got everyone’s attention as a consumer, but our interest and expectations as a business audience are not the same.

Here are our insights into some of the most critical groups in terms of expectations and how to deliver on them.

BOARD MEMBERS:

This audience starts with their responsibility. And related to AI, they sit somewhere between the intrigue of what you think you can do and the reality of how fast and how well you’re doing it. They are both an internal and external audience, meaning they learn from your internal teams, but they also bring insights from their own experiences. This audience can get ahead of you, behind you or opposed to you based on knowledge they get from outside the company.

Most boards went into last year with expectations around AI investment and measurement. Your goal at this point should be consistency in how you keep them updated. You should have a storyline in place that they’ve aligned to with views of activity, pace and expected outcomes. Keep them involved enough to understand the misses and resets, so they own the learnings with you. Don’t reset the storyline every time you talk to your Board. If they don’t know your AI strategy and progress at this point, you are misaligned. Solve for that by repositioning a high-level storyline – and putting an AI report in place that gives them an enterprise view of what you’re doing.

Missteps: Your efforts around AI will pull your technology leaders into the spotlight. While it’s a strategy for a company, it is a career-defining moment for people leading these efforts. Coach them now on the language of Boards. It’s a different audience for them, and if the Board doesn’t have confidence in your AI talent, you’ll struggle to keep them in step with a strategy.

INVESTORS:

This is the skeptical audience.

Consider them the most knowledgeable in terms of industry perspective and a broad view across your competitors and partners. They’ve heard the AI hype story for a while, and they read between the lines on what you plan to do and what you’re actually doing. Generally, they believe the early adopters will win by getting ahead of everyone else.

They’re tracking progress by digging in on AI investment and AI value. They agree there is potential for AI to transform companies, but most say they don’t truly see it yet. So, they drill down to get to the core elements of what you’re doing. If it’s a new audience for you, know your AI story. It needs to represent a forward view, a current focus and measurable results. All companies are testing how they will report progress in this area. Expect to be held to these measures and get clear on how to communicate about them.

Missteps: Winning at AI from an investor view is delivering customer outcomes. For many companies, a starting point was to talk about their internal outcomes as they learned AI. Companies considered these outcomes; investors consider it activity. Repeatedly, they call out that companies aren’t proving that customers are taking the journey with them. In some cases, this is a lack of good storytelling and knowing how to tell success stories from the customer’s perspective.

CUSTOMERS:

Customers are eager to hear about AI efforts. Like investors, they care less about what you’re proving internally and much more about outcomes for other customers.

They’re also focused on the role of data in this process. We’ve helped many companies illustrate the AI integration journey within a customer’s world, and it gets results. It shows understanding and effort to consider where they can expect the most value and steps toward better outcomes.

Your customers hope to learn from you and other partners, and it’s a great entry point to new relationships within a customer organization. We’re helping elevate and broaden these conversations, so sales teams can use AI to get visibility to other decision makers within companies.

Missteps: Some companies miss the mark by not building AI into their go-to-market message. They give the sales team “hand me downs” from how AI was communicated as a strategy. That breaks a golden rule: the customer comes first. Until it has value to me, I don’t really care what you’re doing to transform, improve or evolve your products and services. That’s your thought leadership and belongs at conferences, not in a sales opportunity.

EMPLOYEES:

For this group, the storyline around AI should be inspiring! We all believe that AI is going to have tremendous impact on our lives, and we want to be a part of it. Share the strategy, and all the good and bad that comes with it. Talk about learnings, failings and next steps.

This is a group that is counting on you to educate them. Whether they’re literally working with AI or two steps away from it right now, they care about it. And if they learn AI in your company, it’s a huge retention tool. Too many companies are putting it in a small, exclusive space, so they can go fast. It’s fine to corner off the work, but don’t corner off communication. It’s too big of an initiative and too central to where you’re heading. Brand the journey and make AI a tool of inclusion.

This is the audience that will build a ground swell around your efforts. Make it understandable to them, and they’ll talk about it and your work around it. They’re the best PR machine you have. They’ll share stories with friends, examples with neighbors and strengthen your brand with AI efforts.

Missteps: For this group, it’s less about missteps and more about no steps. Don’t just recycle content here. Build a journey around AI that is inspiring and includes the entire organization. Employees are a captive audience right now because they want to be involved. Keep them out of the mechanics and engage them in possibilities and opportunities in their work.

 

If you’re in a position to communicate about AI, we can help you balance a future view with a current one. While your audiences have different perspectives and expectations around this hot topic, your storyline has to get to outcomes. And we can help you do that.

Also Read: Can ChatGPT Write My Speech?

 

When Feedback is a Setback

We’ve all heard the adage: feedback is a gift. And in most cases, it is. But the gift itself is sometimes overlooked. Most of us think feedback is a gift because it tells us how we’re doing and how we can improve. We think of feedback as a performance measure because it’s often packaged within a performance review. But the greatest gift of feedback is the insight it provides into someone else’s perspective.

And the further along you are in your career journey, the more that perspective matters.

Early in a career, feedback tends to tie to one manager’s thinking. Performance is about skills as you learn and settle into an individual contributor role. But as careers progress, feedback shifts from skills to impact and from deliverables to influence.

Unfortunately, it’s also when feedback becomes less frequent. It’s harder to give feedback about impressions and impact. It’s more nuanced and subjective. People managers can’t look at a list of eight skills and tell you that you “check the box on six and need to improve on two.” Impressions are more relational. Do people enjoy working with you? Are you able to resolve conflict in meetings? Do you respect ideas of others, or do you do all the talking?

Feedback becomes less frequent just as the impact of those impressions matter most. And that’s when feedback can be a setback.

Once you hit a mid-management level, a single people leader doesn’t control career advancement. People leaders work in groups to discuss expectations, career advancement and succession. And impressions lead the conversation. How have a group of leaders experienced you? Have you had visibility across a management team – or only with one leader? Do they see flexibility in your skills? Could they move you from one area to another to accelerate impact?

Those impressions have been taking shape over time and if you and your manager haven’t talked about them, you may be behind or misaligned. Often, it can be an unexpected roadblock to what you’d like to do next.

So, what can you do about it?

• First, ask for feedback on impressions
• And second, follow three steps to manage feedback effectively

People leaders don’t give great feedback on impressions because it’s a harder conversation to lead. When people managers share impressions or input from others, they don’t always have clear ideas on how to get beyond it. To position an impression, they talk more broadly and less specifically, which can make it hard to change an impression.

That’s why some managers avoid this feedback and let the impression linger. That’s harder because it can build over time and become more challenging for you to address if it’s taken hold. You need this feedback, and if it isn’t a part of how your manager shares feedback today, you should broaden the conversation and ask for it.

If this has happened to you, you’re not alone. More than 75% of seasoned managers don’t have a full view of their brand and impact within an organization. It’s why most of our coaching engagements include a verbal assessment to better understand impressions, strengths and blind spots. If it isn’t something that you’ve done recently, it’s a helpful view into your brand within an organization.

And that leads to the second point. There are three things you can do to signal you’re open and appreciative of receiving subjective feedback.

First, own it. Our instinct when someone shares an impression is to react to it. And the first step to encourage an open conversation is to avoid that.

Your manager might say: “John, I wasn’t in the meeting, but I’ve heard that you were defensive as others tried to give input to our rollout plan for the integration.”

All of us want to jump in quickly and say:

“No, I wasn’t defensive. I just felt like they didn’t understand the timeline and so I went back through it.”

A quick reaction signals that you’re not really listening. You’re solving it…which your manager reads as dismissive of the feedback. Instead, listen fully. Allow your manager to get the full thought out before you respond. He or she is literally trying to share how people experienced you in a meeting. You need to fully hear it.

Pause, listen and ask for more.

Because chances are when someone tells your manager, you are resistant, they tell your manager more. If you cut off the conversation too quickly, you’ll shut down the most important part of the feedback.

Instead, own the comment and try to understand the perspective.

EX: If someone felt I was defensive, how did that impact the ideas that they were trying to share with me?

Second, clarify it.

From a manager’s perspective, this conversation is less about solving for impressions and more about raising awareness.

Once the manager has framed the impressions, you may have questions to better understand the group’s reaction or impact. Avoid getting too tactical about yourself yet. Seek deeper understanding to learn if your manager has heard this feedback before. Is it broader than one meeting? Has your manager experienced it before? Does your manager have another example?

Keep yourself in discovery mode. It’s an open conversation with your manager, not an interrogation. And the more insight that they share, the more you can process what may be leading to the impressions.

And third, resolve it.

Impressions don’t get solved overnight. Working on how others perceive you and interact with you can be a hard shift to make.

The manager’s goal was to start with awareness, not resolution. And you need some time to think about what you’ve heard. You may even validate it with input from others.

Impressions may take months to reset. Most people need a plan to become more intentional about showing up differently. In this meeting, gain a commitment from your manager of when you’d like to come back and share your thoughts on how to resolve it.

External coaching can be a great resource. Working through feedback, impressions and overall impact in an organization is one of the most effective ways to use a coach. If feedback has set you back or hasn’t even been offered, we’d love to help you gain awareness of your brand and your opportunities to continue to advance.

Also Read: Are You Being Cautious with Feedback?

 

Speaking Up May Be Harder Than You Think

It’s true that feedback is a gift. But sometimes, managers go beyond sharing insights and they offer the employee the “perfect” solution for how to resolve it. With communication feedback…that can get a little tricky.

That’s certainly been my experience as I’ve coached people who got feedback to “speak up”.

It’s one of those phrases that seems so simple. In reality, it means different things coming from different managers.

• Some use it to tell someone that they’re soft-spoken and need to speak up so they can be heard… They’re guiding projection.
• Others use it to suggest that someone isn’t adding to meetings or discussions, and they need to “speak up more”…They’re guiding brand and impressions.
• Still others use it more generally to suggest to someone that they need to speak up in a setting or with a specific group…They’re guiding executive presence.

As we’ve explored this further with clients across the globe, we continue to learn the meaning of the phrase across different backgrounds and diverse cultures. More formal cultures guide respect by not speaking up unless you’re asked to. There may be a “sir” or a “Ms. Jones” added as part of it. For this employee, “speaking up” may be harder than you think.

Many people have shared their beliefs that they don’t have the right to speak up unless someone calls on them or asks for their input. Sometimes gender plays into it and skews their confidence in speaking up.

Still, others shared their upbringing and beliefs about being assertive. They were encouraged to be assertive, so they weren’t ignored or tuned out. They enter a lot of business settings ready to defend their perspective and may be seen as pushy or aggressive. Their goal has always been to “speak up.”

And the best way to approach feedback with any of these perspectives is to start by understanding the WHY instead of jumping in with WHAT they should do differently.

The manager’s perspective is right. People do need to be seen and heard in settings to establish their brand, their experience and their way of thinking. No one sees you as a strategic thinker unless they hear you as a strategic communicator.

But everyone may not get there in the same way.

Here are a few suggestions for uncovering the WHY behind “speaking up.”

You have an employee who is soft-spoken.
Start this conversation by asking “Has anyone ever told you that you’re soft-spoken?” Technically, they need to understand how to get their voice forward and project more effort behind their words. But they may have known that since they were six years old, and they may have tried multiple ways to do this. Most people have the ability to do it; they hold their voice back for various reasons. It could be because a parent spoke softly, and they learned to follow that speech pattern. It could also be the opposite. A parent spoke very loudly, and they spoke softly to avoid mirroring an overbearing speech pattern.

Some women view soft-spoken as demure, and they may be in a culture that fosters that. Some men view soft-spoken as respectful, and they may be illustrating a more formal upbringing.

By allowing someone to tell you more about the WHY behind soft-spoken, you’ll know whether there are some perceptions to work through as well as skills to support voice strength.

You have an employee who doesn’t speak much in meetings.
Start this conversation by asking: “Do you want to add to conversations?” And then allow the employee to tell you WHY they don’t speak up. It could be that they don’t want to speak up because others speak too much, and it makes meetings run long. They may hear the feedback as a suggestion to show up more like a peer who talks too much. Managers often give guidance by saying “You should speak up like Jeff does in meetings.” Jeff may monopolize conversations more than you realize, and an employee who is more introverted than Jeff will never follow that advice.

As you explore the WHY, you may also learn that an employee doesn’t think as fast as others in the room. They may say that they have thoughts to add…. after the meeting wraps up. They just need more time to think it all the way through.

Every manager should know the make-up of a group and the different kinds of thinkers in the room. Someone who is more process-oriented needs time to think it through before they’ll jump in with an idea or answer that may be wrong. If you knew this, you could help this employee by providing agendas ahead of time. A process thinker will be great if given the time to prepare.

You might also have an employee who isn’t speaking up from a place of respect or a more formal upbringing. And they may literally not know when to do so. You can learn more about this by asking “If you have something to add, what keeps you from jumping in?” If you knew this, you could create openings in conversations and invite a more hesitant employee into the conversation. So, they’ll worry less about when it’s appropriate and speak up more when you invite them into the conversation.

You have an employee who talks too much.
Start this conversation by saying: “You had a lot of enthusiasm today. I felt like you said the same thing multiple times. Why?”

If someone was guided to be assertive, they may continue to “speak up” again and again until they feel acknowledged or as if they won the discussion. They may be seeking some kind of validation or credit that isn’t likely in most meetings.

So how do you guide the “over-talkers” to a better balance?

Their blind spot isn’t really how much they’re speaking. It’s the lack of focus on everyone else. There may be insights in the WHY behind someone who feels the need to be heard the most. For this employee, the real opportunity or learning is the perspective of everyone else. Get insight on how they feel heard by asking “How did the group react to your idea? What was the reaction you were expecting?”

You can guide this person through awareness of team dynamics and the concept of a great team player who not only speaks to share their perspective but also speaks to move a topic toward an outcome that includes everyone’s input.

 

“Speaking Up” can mean something different to each of us. If you have an employee who needs to show up differently, start with a better understanding of WHY they don’t speak up. Be less quick to solve it from your perspective and more patient with understanding the WHY from the employee’s perspective.

Feedback is a gift, and spending the time to understand the WHY behind a behavior gets everyone to a better outcome. If you’d like to improve the way you give feedback, we can help.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

Are You Being Cautious with Feedback?

If your answer is yes, you’re in line with many managers who say they’re trying to avoid conflict and more disruption on their teams. And it’s no wonder. Last week’s US Chamber of Commerce reported 10 million job openings in the US. On many teams, managers are missing resources, and they worry that giving direct and honest feedback may make an employee want to quit.

They’ve decided that an average or a below-average employee is better than another unfilled position. Some say the bar is lower on expectations to keep people in roles. And they’ve made a lot of concessions to keep employees happy. So, they’re cautious with feedback and they allow missed deadlines, missed meetings and a host of other behaviors to take place.

It’s a short-term action…with long-term side effects.

Every manager who has done this knows it isn’t a great solution. But few understand the deeper impact of allowing a team member to “just get by” or to take advantage of a tight job market.

The side effects start with the impact on everyone else. Other team members often pick up the slack when someone isn’t doing their job well. They’re also observing a manager who isn’t willing to have tough conversations. And it’s demotivating to high performers to see that doing well doesn’t really matter since it’s OK not to do well. Unintentionally, managers lower the bar for everyone when they allow even one to slide under the bar.

And there’s a tremendous side effect on the managers themselves. In our feedback workshops, we calculate how much time a manager spends on an underperforming employee. It’s a lot. In some cases, managers are spending twice as much time on these employees as everyone else. In other cases, they’re literally doing the work themselves to avoid conflict. And in both cases, it’s not the best use of the manager’s time if the employee’s work isn’t improving.

The lack of feedback can also have side effects on the employee themselves. When managers don’t give honest feedback, they’re setting a precedent that someone else will have to undo in the employee’s next role.

Here’s the real question: How bad would it be if an underperforming employee decided to quit?

Overnight, managers would go from one unfilled position to two. And depending on the size of the team that may cause projects to be realigned or deadlines to be pushed out. But the side effects also go away. Managers immediately notice the ease of the burden. And other team members feel it as it validates that you do value hard work because you weren’t willing to allow the lack of it.

Feedback is essential. Everyone on a team needs it. But it isn’t always easy. It can be a challenging conversation, and because many managers dread it, they often miss a few steps that would make feedback a better experience from both perspectives.

Here are a few of our coaching steps to manage feedback conversations.

Uncover the WHY – Managers are stretched and rushed. And because they’re rushed trying to fix problems, they jump into these conversations and focus on literally what happened and how to resolve it. They often miss the WHY behind a problem. And when you don’t know why something happened, you can never be sure that you’ve improved on it or solved a challenge.

Assess Skills Vs Behaviors – Managers often approach every challenge as if it’s a skill gap. Someone didn’t understand how to do something or doesn’t feel confident in the way they’re going about it. But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, employees choose to not do things well or let things drop because they don’t see the value or don’t like the toll of the work. And it’s happening more often because some employees have come back to the workforce simply for a paycheck.

If the conversation begins with discovery behind the why, managers can quickly assess whether the problem occurred because of a skill gap or a behavior choice. It’s an important distinction in order to get to the right actions.

And unfortunately, a virtual work setting makes it easier to disguise some of the behavior choices. So, managers need to invest the time to prepare for these conversations in order to get honest responses and reactions from an employee.

Listen More, Talk Less – Talk less as a manager. The more a manager talks, the more they’re owning the problem. A feedback discussion reveals insights that can help an employee get to better outcomes. But it can’t be prescriptive. If a manager tells an employee how to solve something, the manager is giving direction more than feedback. Allow the employee to participate in the solution and define the action that changes it.

Move Beyond It. The fear of losing employees is real. And it may be less about the conversation itself and more about the impact it has on the emotions of an individual afterward. Everyone on the team observes that. The manager has the power to reset interaction and move an employee and a team beyond it. Don’t allow awkwardness or distance between you and the employee. Show interest in them personally and reset the group to an engaging and warm environment. Every employee watches the manager to gauge temperature. When a manager illustrates that they’re not holding onto emotion or frustration toward an employee, even when there is a gap or challenge with their work, the team exhales and moves beyond it.

Feedback is a gift. Assume best intentions from everyone on your team. Listen for the WHY at the start of the conversation and adjust the conversation to involve the employee in working through a solution. Set parameters, timing and a check-in to get to a resolution.

And if you’re a manager who feels a little cautious with feedback, call us and we’ll give you the tools to prepare for the tougher conversations.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!